


Too Quiet to Fall Asleep

by sitron



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Platonic Relationships, write the non romantic fics you want to see in the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 20:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13325613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sitron/pseuds/sitron
Summary: Pidge has trouble sleeping in her room, so she embarks on a journey to find a better spot to chill out until the rest of the team wakes up, while struggling to keep feelings of loneliness at bay- Rated teen because there's like one swear word -





	Too Quiet to Fall Asleep

Pidge stared at the ceiling. Or, what she presumed was the ceiling. It was really too dark to even know if there was anything up there. Or if anything was even real, none of this seemed real.

_no. stop it._

She was not spiralling down there again. It was late and she wasn’t thinking logically. She tried to tune out her thoughts with the sound of the castle’s engines. that usually helped. Why couldn’t she focus on the castle’s engines? There was no sound.

The silence was overwhelming. In the corner of her eye she noticed something. She turned her head. There was a small light coming from something on the floor. Her communicator! They used the communicators, lovingly dubbed “space smartphones” by Lance, to always stay updated on what was happening aboard the ship.

If something was malfunctioning, they could see what on the communicator. If the particle barrier turned on, they could see it on the communicator. If the security alarm went off, they would definitely hear it, but that too would be visible on the communicator. They also had messageboard function, where you could put out small messages like “ _we’re out of toilet paper_ ”, or “ _I made cookies, without scaultrite this time, come to the kitchen if you want a bite_ ”, or inspiring messages like the entire bee movie script. It was great. And now the communicator was beeping.

Her stomach muscles complained as she sat up. Training with the paladins was definitely harder than PE class at the garrison had been. The communicator was lying on the floor at the complete opposite side of the room. Her room was a mess, but an organized one; she always made a point of putting things in different piles, which she then memorized a path through so she wouldn’t trip in the dark. It even doubled as booby traps for unwanted guests.

Leaned against the wall, she opened the notification on her communicator. According to it, someone had turned off the engines. That did not help her calm down, she already knew the engines were turned off.

_oh, there’s a message._

She opened the board. The most recent one was in the form of a small speech bubble with the text “Turned off engines to preserve energy. We will arrive our destination in about 8 vargas with our current speed”. The tail of the bubble lead to a small, orange mustache, Coran’s symbol. well, that explains that. Knowing that she could never sleep without the comforting sound of the engines, Pidge equipped herself with a pillow and a blanket around her shoulders, and journeyed out on a quest to find a new, better chill spot. The bridge seemed like the most fitting candidate at the moment, because of its open view to the endless void that is space.

Walking through the poorly lit hallway, she heard footsteps approaching. She looked up to see Keith walking towards her. She nodded at him as he passed. He nodded back. This was a normal occurrence, as both of them had problems with insomnia. Pidge had once seen Keith sitting on the kitchen floor, head in his hands next to a spilled bowl of space cereal. He had once seen her dangling from the ceiling after falling out of a vent she had fallen asleep in. They had a silent agreement to never mention anything they saw during their nightly adventures.

The doors to the bridge slid open with a woosh. Pidge was greeted by the silence of the huge room. Looking through the large windows, she could see that they were currently traveling in completely open space.

_Explains how Coran could just turn the engines completely off like that_ ,

She walked over to her chair. The seat was hard and cold, but by adding her blanket and pillow, it could be turned into a pretty comfortable armchair. It was weird looking at the stars and being unable to recognize any of them. Back on Earth she had memorized all the constellations, and knew several of the greek myths connected to them.

When she and Matt were kids they used to climb up on the roof at night and tell each other stories about the constellations. He often changed the stories, or just straight up made them up as he went, so she wasn’t really sure how much of what she knew were actual greek myths, and what was her brother’s imagination. That didn’t really bother her, though. She liked the thought that she carried some of his stories. That way he would be with her, in a way, even if she never… Pidge stopped herself. She refused to let her mind go there. He was alive. She knew he was. Even if she had no clues on his whereabouts, even though the last thing she knew about him is that he was wounded in galra captivity. Even though space is endless and the galra empire must be in control every part of it, even though she’s in the middle of a _war_ , even though-

“Pidge?” she heard a voice behind her. “is that you?” Pidge looked around the back of the chair. Keith was standing by the door. His expression changed when he saw her face.

“Are you okay?” He began walking towards her.

“why wouldn’t I be?” she answered. Or at least that’s what she tried to answer, but out of her mouth came only half a word, the rest drowned in a sob.

_shit,_ she thought, as she realized that she was, in fact, crying. She was crying in front of a crew member. Or, a crew member that wasn’t Shiro. This was _not good._

By now Keith had almost gotten to the chair she was in, but he slowed down with the sudden realization that he had no idea what to do. He had found Pidge, the youngest paladin, crying alone. How do you handle that? He didn’t even know Pidge that well! He knew she was kind of like him; she had a messy sleep routine, she had a slightly better temperament than him, but still got angry quite often, she liked being alone,- she likes being alone!

He had broken the silent rule! This was not good! Pidge was still staring at him. He stopped beside her chair and she looked away. Keith sat down on the floor. Pidge pulled her legs up and rested her head on her knees. She sniffled. Keith tried to think of something to say, but turned up empty. None of the “comforting phrases” he knew really applied here. “I’m sorry” for what, I didn’t do anything. “are you okay?” no she’s not, besides I already tried that. “what’s wrong?” everything is wrong, idiot. “there, there” she may be young, but she’s not three. also then he’d need to stretch his hand out to pat her knee or something and that’s definitely not going make her feel better. He decided to just leave again. Maybe he could ask Shiro to talk to her, he had already broken their silent agreement to mind their own business. He got on his feet and began turning around when he felt someone grab his wrist.

“don’t” Pidge managed to say. Keith sat down again. Now he had one of his arms kind of reaching up in the chair.

“can we sit… not like this?” he immediately regretted asking.

“yeah.” Pidge answered. She let go of his wrist. Then she got out of the chair. Keith thought she was just going to leave, but she sat down beside him and wrapped the blanket around both of them. He had never really thought about just how big and empty this room was. With nothing but empty space on all sides, he suddenly felt a thousand times smaller. None of them said anything, but at least they didn’t have to feel both small _and_ alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this ages ago after a sleepless night and kind of forgot about it. The ending is sort of rushed because I just wanted to get it out of my "almost finished" pile, and it felt like a good place to end. Constructive criticism is appreciated! I have not used AO3 a lot, so if there is anything I should change about the layout, please let me know.


End file.
